The Others by Sarah Blau (best ereader for academics TXT) 📗

machine, but it happened! Avihu proposed! I knew the moment I heard the message that I wouldn’t go to the wedding. I couldn’t even bear to picture it. But it took me a long time to admit this even to myself.

“So, let’s talk about my mother, shall we?” Gali produces a tiny camera, handling it with surprising skill. Did the hamster just let out a tiny scream or is it my imagination?

No, it’s the sound of an incoming text. I never realized how much it sounds like a scream. I swoop down to pick up my phone only to see that the text is from Eli: Well, how are you? he writes, and I feel like killing him. I could murder anyone who sends me a text that isn’t Micha. That’s how I am.

And then Gali points the camera at my face, and I’m so busy calculating whether the lighting and angles are flattering – should I ask her to hold the camera higher so as to eliminate the double chin effect? – that I almost fail to hear the question directed at me in that pleasant tone of hers, “So how have you been doing in the sixteen and a quarter years since you killed my mother?”

17

I STARE AT HER, hoping that if I blink she’ll disappear, or at least the question will.

But she’s still here, standing in front of me with her pretty eyes, her mother’s eyes, giving me an encouraging smile.

Just as I try to make out what’s hiding behind that smile, my phone beeps with an incoming message again, and this time I know it’s from Micha, I can feel it in every cell of my body, but when I reach for the phone, Gali barks at me, “Don’t answer that, answer me first.” Her voice is steely and sounds just like her mother’s did that fateful night, The knife! The knife! Give me the knife!

But unlike that night, when I was struck mute, I look her straight in the eye and say, “Are you for real?” and after a moment of silent hesitation, the rigid mask cracks and she smiles at me. “I was just messing with you, Sheila.”

I am not amused. I feel like shaking her, bending her over my knee and spanking her like in the Victorian novels I used to read as a kid. Bad girl, Gali! Take that! And another one! And another!

Instead, I say, “It isn’t funny,” and lower my gaze to my phone. The text is indeed from Micha: How are you?

Not again with this how-are-you business! Let me tell you how I am, Micha: remember Gali? Naama’s daughter? Naama who was my best friend and then some? So Gali, who I used to babysit way back when, the Gali I loved more than I ever loved any human being before or since, and to whom I felt close in ways I couldn’t explain even to myself – well, that same Gali just stuck a camera in my face and accused me of killing her mother.

That’s how I am.

“Sheila, I’m sorry, it was like a half-joke,” she says with half-remorse. “I thought you had a sense of humour.”

Our eyes lock. POP go the soap bubbles, bursting in my face, and I pull a pretend angry face, “What did you do, munchkin? I’m gonna get you!” I chase after her, but oh, no! I slip with banana-peel theatrics, legs high in the air, and get a barrage of soap bubbles blown straight into my face with that sweet ring of baby laughter. “What did you do to me, munchkin? You just wait!” And again, that tiny, heart-melting laughter… Yes. I used to have a sense of humour.

“I don’t get what you’re trying to do,” I say.

“I wanted to see how you’d react.”

“Well, you saw.” My tone is officious and pedagogic, and I see Gali has picked up on it, hiding the start of a smile. The corners of my lips instinctively curve upwards, but I pull them back down. Not yet.

“It was just to give the video a funny twist, and you’re the only one I could try that with.”

“Well, turns out I’m the only one left.”

I can’t catch her reaction because just then she bends over Jezebel’s cage, looking so scrawny from behind, almost arseless with that baggy, dark jeans skirt hanging from her waist. Her flaming auburn locks suddenly seem scraggly with no mother around to make sure she uses conditioner, and I think of all those motherless years of hers, growing up with Avihu the idiot and that aunt who allegedly took care of her, but to what degree, if at all? Despite all this, she grew up to be this sharp and delightful young woman, and I think how proud Naama would have been if she could see her now, and at this thought, a treacherous tear starts tickling my throat and I order it to go away because I know that the lovely and witty Gali is fully aware of my terrible weakness for her, and I know she’ll take advantage of it if I don’t watch out. Thrump! Thrump! Thrump! Take the knife from her! And that last terrible look in Naama’s eyes, a look that said, “Et tu, Brute?” The very same look I now see in Gali’s eyes.

When I walk out of her room, I find Avihu leaning against the front door, looking weak and defeated until I notice that sinister glint in his eyes.

“I remember you vividly,” he says. “You were the worst one in the group, she trusted you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” He won’t budge from the door and I wonder whether I should call out to Gali, but I somehow know that she’s hearing everything and choosing to stay in her room.

“Avihu, let me out.” I take a step forward and it proves a mistake, since not only is he not moving but now he’s close enough to lean in and whisper